Writing Articles For Seniors Only Club

I am going to add a section of articles to this site -- not the forum but a separate part of the same domain -- once I accumulate enough of them so that I don't have empty pages. I'd like some of you to help with it. I can't afford to pay a lot, but I will compensate you for your work.

There will be ads placed on these pages, but I don't anticipate a large revenue from them. If I do better than I expect, I'll be able to pay more for articles.

Some of you have been published professionally, while there are others who have not been previously published, but you have ideas worth putting to words and the ability to do so, or would like to give it a try anyhow.

What I'm not looking for are hard feelings from anyone who feels that I didn't pay them what they were worth, or who may have learned that I paid someone else more for an article. Some articles are worth more than others, and it might be that I can't afford some of you.

In general, I'd rather have stories from your childhood than facts based on research. I'd rather have your feelings on a topic than a news or informational article on the subject. I'd rather have a story than a research paper. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am looking for something that means something to you as you are writing it, favoring entertainment over education, feelings over facts, and experiences over research. Write what you think, not what you think I want to hear.

I mention these examples in order to give you an idea of what I'm looking for, not to say that I would reject fact-based articles, particularly if these are facts that are not easily obtainable through online research. Some topics may require another approach.

Please don't make your article simply an extension of a forum conversation, although it may include topics that have been under discussion here.

Although there may be exceptions to some of these based on the topic of the article, generally what I am looking for are articles that:

• Are 100% original, and not taken from anyone else's work, whether in whole or in part.
• Are based on the author's own experiences, reminiscences, feelings, ideas and thoughts.
• Are relatable to seniors, baby boomers, or people fifty or older.
• Are evergreen, whenever possible, which means not dated by current events.
• Are not dependent on links to other web sites.
• Are at least 750 words in length, with some exceptions.
• Are not published elsewhere.

SENIORSonly Club would have exclusive rights to publish any articles that are accepted for publication here, which simply means that you would agree not to submit the same article elsewhere or give permission to anyone else to publish it. Once we have paid for the article, or published it on the SENIORSonly Club web site, demands to remove it will not be entertained.

Prior to publication, your article may be edited as deemed necessary for the sake of grammar, proper spelling, or clarity.

You will retain authorship of the article, however. No one else will claim your work as their own. I would encourage you to include your name as the author, but you may use a pseudonym if you wish.

This is not content writing, in which I would be paying you to write an article that I would later claim to be my own. What I am paying for is the sole publishing rights to an article that you wrote for this web site. You remain the author of the article, and may use your own name.

 

This would be a feature that I'll be adding to over time, so articles will be separated into topic categories that will closely resemble those used in the forum itself, from which you can garner possible topics for articles. Articles of the sort that you might find in Good Old Days or Reminisce would certainly be appropriate, unless of course they are copied from these publications.

I won't go into detail for each of these categories, but I'll make a few comments on some of them, just to give you an idea of what I'm looking for. Please, don't everyone choose a topic from the few that I suggest here, as they are just to give you an idea of what I'm looking for. Be creative.

Senior Forums

I am not interested, at this time, in having a lot of articles in this category, which relates to the Forum Administration & Notices category of the forum, but I would entertain an article on the usefulness or attraction of online forums to people fifty and older, one on why seniors might not be using online forums. Also, if someone wanted to write an article on this forum in particular, that might be nice.

Education & Entertainment

There are countless possible topics that would fit into this category. What was school like for you in elementary school or high school? What did you have available to you in the way of gadgets and technology? Expound on these and other topics in this category.

Getting it Done

Look through the sub-forums in this category in the forum and you will find several possible topics. I am looking for text articles though, not photo galleries, although I can publish one or two photos along with your articles if they enhance the text. As with the writing, make sure that they are photos that you have the rights to, however. Ask me if you have any questions about it.

Hot Button Issues

I am not looking for a recitation of paranormal tales, descriptions of cryptozoological creatures, or conspiracy theories here, but any personal experiences that you may have had are fine, whether real or imagined. Perhaps you grew up with a ghost story that related to your town, or there was a local scare that intrigued you as a child, or yet today. Those stories are fine. I just don't want someone rewording something that they have read in a book or on someone else's web site.

If you would like to tell us why you believe or don't believe whatever it is that you believe or don't believe in, you may do so without interruption, particularly if you can do so using personal testimonies rather than researched topics. That doesn't mean that you can't look something up if you're uncertain of a fact or a detail. It simply means that I want it to come from your heart and your mind. Any topics in this category can be used.

As far as news goes, I am not so interested in current or recent news stories, although you can surely make reference to them. Mostly though, I'm looking for something along the lines of what were you doing when the first man went into space, or landed on the moon? Did this effect your life in any way? Or any other major topic, particularly from your childhood, since you don't have to be a senior to relate to the World Trade Towers attack.

For example, when John F. Kennedy was shot, I was in the seventh grade. Our teacher was called out of the room. She came back in crying, and announced that the president had been shot. It meant nothing to me. The president was no more of a real person than anyone else who I saw on television once in a while. He was not a human being to me. Later, when the principal announced that we would be getting out of school early because the president had been shot, I joked that I hoped they shot him again next week. For me to write a story about that day, feigning deep remorse for the loss of a great man, that wouldn't be a real story for me. I didn't feel that. What it meant to me was that we were getting out of school early on a Friday. I might write an article about that day, but I wouldn't rewrite my personal history in order to pretend that I had felt the appropriate emotions. No, the story would be that I had not.

I Remember When

This should be an easy category for anyone. Tell us your stories.

On the Lighter Side

This might be a tougher one, since I'm looking for longer articles than most of the topics in this category might suggest, but I would like to have something here. You could probably do something with the happy talk sub-section, and tall tales a fabrications is wide open.

Ourselves & Others

There is no end to potential topics for this category, as well. Tell us the stories of your family members. You can change their names, if you'd like. No one is going to fact-check you, but I'd like something that is real to you.

Other Topics

This category will be used much as it is in the forum. I would like you to be creative in choosing a topic. As much as possible, I would like it to relate to people our age, but it doesn't necessarily have to relate to a specific topic currently included in the forum.

 

If you are interested in writing an article or articles for this section of SENIORSonly Club, please contact me by private conversation in the forum.

I have a number that I think I can afford to pay per article but some articles are going to be worth less, others more, based on the length and quality of the article.

Let me know what you have in mind, and what you would like to get for it. It is quite possible that I can't afford it, and that should not be interpreted as implying that I didn't think your work was worth it.

I'd like to deal with any interested members individually. We can agree on a base rate, which I will pay upon acceptance of the article. Please clear your topics and the amount of money that you expect to be paid with me before beginning.

If what you send me turns out to be something that I can't use, then I won't buy it or publish it. I don't anticipate that happening. Unless I get the feeling that very little thought or time was put into it, or there are copyright issues, I will more likely pay you the amount that we had agreed upon even if I have to rewrite portions of your article in order to make it usable, but in that case I probably wouldn't ask you to write additional articles.

If I am impressed with the quality and content of your article, I may also pay you more than what we agreed upon, especially if we had agreed on an amount that was less than I am paying other comparable authors, and I will probably ask you to write additional articles.

This is important. Please do not discuss the amounts that we have agreed upon with anyone else. If this leads to hard feelings and bickering, I'll simply close the project down and look outside of the forum for writers.

Although I would much rather have articles on a wide range of topics, I have no objection to publishing two articles on the same general topic as long as they differ from one another in content and composition. I will also be writing articles, so I will be helping to fill it out as well.

There is no rush, either to choose a topic or to complete an article. I probably can't afford to buy more than one or two of them in any given week, anyhow. Please keep in mind when you submit your article that I may not be able to pay you for it immediately, but I will not publish it until it has been paid for. Please let me know if you're interested though, so that I know what to expect.

General questions may be asked here, but any specific questions should be addressed privately.

 

By the way, the above applies for the beginning phase of this project. Once I receive a first article from someone, then I will decide whether I want a second or a third. Once I have several articles in the hopper, I'll have a better idea as to what is reasonable, and maybe be able to come up with a set rate, but always with the possibility of bonuses.

 

I haven't decided on format yet, but it will probably be more like a regular website, only connected to this domain. I don't want a format where new stuff will push the old stuff down to the bottom, so that it will never be seen again. As for the rest, no it won't be a huge production but simply a supplement to this site, so I'd rather keep it in-house and I'd rather have stuff from people who would enjoy writing something for this site.

 

This would be set up differently, by category. I might highlight a few of the newer articles on the front but I specifically want to get away from the blog or magazine format, where articles are dated and the only relevant content is the most recent content. Therefore, it will be more of a website design. No, I won't be paying nearly that much as it's really more of an addition to this forum than a moneymaking venture.

Article sites were very popular years ago, and a large reason why they are not doing so well today is because the same articles were submitted, either in whole or in spun format, to several other sites. Search engines handle duplicate content negatively. When the same content appears on more than one page, the way that the search engines handle it is that the first site that the content is indexed on will usually be the only one that remains in the search engine index. However, if a later site to publish the article is considered more authoritative by the search engine, the first site to publish it might get bumped as far as search engine results go. Sites that routinely publish articles that are duplicated elsewhere are penalized by the search engines, particularly Google.

The search engines don't know or care who paid for the article, so the person who has paid for the articles might find his own site penalized for publishing them. For example, some authors have a practice of publishing articles that they are especially proud of on their own site so that they can point other clients to them as samples of their work. Well, Google is very good at figuring out who owns what. In fact, it's uncanny in its abilities. I have had sites on separate hosting accounts, using separate contacts, without my name, and which did not link one to the other, yet Google knows which of them are mine.

Here's the problem. Let's say I buy an article from an author named John G. Brunner. I pay John to write an article specifically for my site. He does, I pay him, and I publish the article on my site. John later adds the article to his own site as an example of his work. That sounds on the up and up. However, Google is likely to view it as if I had stolen the content from John G. Brunner because he has it published on his own site, and I could be penalized for something that I had paid for. Since risking penalization is the opposite of what I want to do with this addition to the site, that's not something I'm interested in.

When someone steals content, they probably make a practice of doing that, and the search engines are likely to be aware of that, so it wouldn't be as likely to cause harm to the sites they are stolen from. Although I would still make an effort to have them removed, I am not likely to have my own site penalized because someone stole some of my content. It's still annoying, and it may pose some risks, but it's not likely to be devastating.

That depends on who is doing the stealing though. My wife was one of the first people to do search engine optimization professionally but she didn't publish professionally, and she had someone who later became very well known in the field steal an article from her site and publish it almost verbatim as his own. Since he was, by then, well known to the search engines as a writer in that field, the article would come up in the search engines pointing to his site, and no longer to hers. I guess everything works that way. If you're rich or well connected, you can get away with stealing whatever you want.

If I should ever decide to shut the SENIORSonly.Club site down, then the authors may do whatever they wish with the articles.

 

That's what I had in mind. This is simply a way to promote the forum. Although I'll include some Amazon.com and Google ads, I have no intention of making a profit of it, but simply recouping some of the expenses. I'm hoping that this will be something that some of you, and myself, will be able to have fun with, hone our writing skills, and maybe create something that others will be interested in reading.

 

I could add blogs through the forum software itself but I don't want blogs. I've done that before, and I would simply end up with several dead blogs. Blogs are dated, so if they are not regularly added to, they are considered dead and would have a negative effect.